Abstract

This study explores the `gendered' process of international migration in Asia. It proposes that gender is one of the principal analytical factors for theoretical conceptualisation in the study of international migration. The study examines the case of Korea, which has been transformed into one of the major labour receiving countries in Asia since the early 1990s, but which has received less attention in the English literature on migration.The aim of the study is to examine the process of international migration in the historical, social and political contexts of Korea, by way of the integration of theoretical analyses with a critical gendered lens. A theoretical framework for this study is based on the observation that theorising the multifaceted process of international migration - which takes place with various interrelated variables - requires multidisciplinary and multidimensional approaches. The study therefore analyses the social formation of the `gendered' process of international migration by looking closely at the three different migratory stages of women migrants: the migratory journey; employment; and settlement in the country of destination. The primary empirical data used in the study were collected during a six-month period of field research - between April and September 2005. Qualitative data were derived from in-depth interviews with 31 migrant women, as well as employers, government officials and NGO workers.Based on a feminist standpoint of the outsider-within, the study locates the lives of migrant women from the margin to centre of the analysis. The empirical study shows that migrant women are `outsiders' who exist `within' the very core of international migration system in which they are, nevertheless, marginalised and silenced. The study suggests that the ostensibly gender-neutral process of migration is gender specific, resulting in different migration experiences between women and men. Gendered and racialised social relationships of power are pervasive in the structure of international migration and state institutions. At the same time, the differently `sedimented' practices of women and men - who strategically draw on institutional rules and resources to facilitate migration - become institutionalised in a gendered way. This, in turn, influences the gendered process of international migration that is reproduced and transformed over time.